News, Views and Analysis

Palestinian self-determination opposed by Canada

Canada—that is, the Harper government, not the decent majority—is pressing for on-going bantustan status for Palestine.

Statehood, sought by the Palestinian authority, will be opposed in the United Nations by Israel, Canada and the US. Should there ever be a Palestinian state—unlikely, given the Israeli government’s preference for slow annexation, and the subjugation of the local population—it will have to be “nonmilitarized,” according to a spokesman for Foreign Affairs minister John Baird. (Somehow one knows that this does not refer to the Israeli Defence Forces, which would no doubt continue to have the run of the place.) Bibi Netanyahu, for his part, just wants to keep Palestine in a box forever.